Girls whose locks of hair had run the blockade in safety were particularly severe on the offenders.

But it didn't stop other notes and other tresses, and I would like to know what can stop them while the earth holds together.
Now when I first came to Rivermouth I looked upon girls as rather tame company; I hadn't a spark of sentiment concerning them; but seeing my comrades sending and receiving mysterious epistles, wearing bits of ribbon in their button-holes and leaving packages of confectionery (generally lemon-drops) in the hollow trunks of trees--why, I felt that this was the proper thing to do.

I resolved, as a matter of duty, to fall in love with somebody, and I didn't care in the least who it was.
In much the same mood that Don Quixote selected the Dulcinea del Toboso for his lady-love, I singled out one of Miss Dorothy's incomparable young ladies for mine.
I debated a long while whether I should not select two, but at last settled down on one--a pale little girl with blue eyes, named Alice.

I shall not make a long story of this, for Alice made short work of me.

She was secretly in love with Pepper Whitcomb.